My Ceffy

[Stang]

Cheers mate.

After wandering around taking these photos, it was nearly 5 o'clock. We had been planning to pick up a few things from the Beerenberg strawberry farm on the way, and managed to just get there in time before they closed.

With a few random presents for people, we headed back to the Hahndorf main street and the German Arms for dinner. Well for Sally anyway, I was just syringing water through my jejunostomy tube instead.

Headed back down the freeway, I made the tough decision to take the old Eagle on the Hill road instead of the tunnels again. There are some really nice twisty roads which are much more entertaining to drive on, but you do miss out on the epic engine sounds in a tunnel.

[Stang]

The Ceffy was kind of dirty again after the hills and freeway driving, so close to home I pulled into another BP for a quick happy wash.

After not going for a hills run since April 2010, the feeling of satisfaction I had in finally being able to go for one was great.

Coming up in Post #18; respray quote and random driving.

[Luciano]

This Ceffy scrubs up so nice! Such a very clean example.

Great write up Rohan

[Stang]

Thanks Luciano, it was about to get a bit cleaner as you'll see in the next few posts.

I was still feeling quite good the day after the awesome Hahndorf hills run with Sally, so we headed up to Mullers Road Crash Repairs to get a quote from owner Cameron for cleaning up and respraying some panels on the Cefiro.

These first few photos are from a GoPro HD Hero camera, which I had mounted on the windscreen, set to take photos every two seconds. You can see more information about the camera on their website here: http://gopro.com/

You can make cool time lapse video clips with it taking photos so often, but the drive wasn't particularly interesting compared to hills runs, so these are just a couple with trucks in them on the way up.

Once we arrived at the workshop, I grabbed the D300 for some non-warped photos like you get from the GoPro, which as you can see in the above pictures, has a very wide field of view.

Cameron came out to have a look around the Cefiro, checking out the various marks and paintwork, and gave me a good price to have it all cleaned up the following Monday.

[Stang]

Back in mid 2009, I shot one of Cameron's cars for Extreme magazine; a purple EK Holden with a supercharged V8 engine. A beautiful machine and goes quite nicely too with the blower strapped on.

He bought a CD of 30 images from the feature shoot, and had one of them blown up on the wall in his office, which looked pretty cool.

In the meantime, he had also been building up a very tidy Holden FB wagon, with a funky teal and white colour scheme, complete with matching interior upholstery. He was actually headed to a car club meeting a short drive away from my house, so a little later that night Sally and I headed over to West Lakes Mall to check it out.

Couldn't really take any decent exterior shots at night, so here's one of the interior, but we made plans to get some half-decent photos at his workshop when I dropped off the Ceffy to have the bodywork done.

[DannyC33]

Are you gettin the bonnet sprayed to match?

[Stang]

The next day we visited a few friends.

A week after going in to Cameron's shop for the quote, it was time to drop off the Ceffy, and at the same time grab some daylight shots of his FB wagon.

In the paint booth at the time was this cool old Ford Falcon van.

In the main workshop was the FB wagon, which Cameron had just finished working on.

With the stunning paintwork and chrome, when he parked it outside on the driveway, it made the Ceffy look rather cheap and plasticky in comparison.

There's a little bit of a surprise under the bonnet; a much newer fuel-injected RB30 six cylinder engine, pillaged from a Holden VL Commodore.

Coming up in Post #19: In the workshop.

[Stang]

While Cameron was repairing and prepping the Cefiro ready for painting, he said that it had been partly resprayed previously, and the front right hand side of the car was a bit different in colour to the left. To make sure I was ok with blending it, he gave me a call and I headed over to the workshop for a quick look.

Some of the difference between the sides is exacerbated by different lighting, but you could see that the left hand side was a creamier white than the right. The bonnet is obviously different again, being from another car altogether.

I'd actually wanted to get some progress shots while the Ceffy was being painted, so it worked out well in the end that I went up there in the meantime.

So after checking out the paint and taking these photos, I gave Cameron the go-ahead to respray the front end of the car.

Coming up in Post #20; freshly resprayed hills run photos.

Edited September 30, 2011 by Stang

[Stang]

With the car freshly sprayed and polished, on the 12th of August, I headed back up to Cameron's workshop to pick up the Ceffy. As I walked up the driveway, I saw it was parked outside the spray booth, looking very tidy. Just respraying and repairing those few front panels, as well as painting over the black strips on the bumpers, made a huge difference aesthetically to the car's appearance. With the gouges and mismatched panels gone, it finally just looked really nice, simple and clean, which is the look I had been wanting all along.

I was curious as to how a blue pearl was blended with the white paint, so Cameron took me into his paint storage shed and showed how the paint and pearl combination was mixed.

I was very happy with how clean the Cefiro looked after the fresh paint job. So if you need some quality paint or panel work done, give Cameron a call at Mullers Road Crash Repairs, on 8261 2328.

After chatting for a little while about cars, I handed over some cash for the work, and then stopped in at a BP to fill up the tank. I snapped a few more photos as well.

Premium wasn't cheap that day at $1.64 a litre, but after ten months of having the same tank of fuel while the Ceffy was sitting idle in the garage, I figured it didn't matter that much.

With the fuel topped up, I thought that since the weather wasn't too bad, it would be a good time for an afternoon hills run to get some nice updated photos of it, while still looking clean and polished.

Coming up in Post #21; photos from the hills run.

[Even_Flow]

Nice write up and ceffy mate. Looks clean as after the spray job...

I just bought one myself as a project car. Should be on the road soon, got a few things i need to do to it.

I'm a 4th year spray painter so i'll be taking it off the road in the near future to respray it. previous owner tried to respay it himself and got runs allll over it. Apart from that its pretty straight, just a few minor dings.

I reckon i've seen ya cruising around military road way, car looked killa cruisin past.

Keep the post's and photos coming, love ya work.

[Stang]

Cheers dude. Yeah I go up and down Military Road fairly often to friends' houses, so that would likely be me.

[Stang]

Although I was really not feeling too good, I still thought it would be worth going for a hills run to get some photos, while the Ceffy was freshly sprayed, clean and polished.

After heading up North-East Road from Cameron's workshop, I made it into the hills, and put my foot down as the road curved steeply upwards ahead. After enjoying some nice corners for a little while, I pulled up on a side road near Houghton to snap a few photos of the Cefiro.

You'll see from the photos that the 'CEFIRO' tail-light centre garnish has been replaced with the more subtle 'Nissan' one. In combination with the de-badging on the boot, it was now fairly anonymous, unless you know what a Cefiro is. I'd talked to both the RAA and an auto electrician previously, and had to explain to both what kind of car it was and how to spell it, which I thought was kind of funny.

Photos taken with a Nikon D90 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, and Nikon D300 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D lens.

After taking these pics, I headed off again down the road, enjoying the corners and sound of the exhaust and turbo. My stomach wasn't very happy, but at least a hills run was a good distraction from it. A few kilometres further along I rolled into the small town of Inglewood, a again turned down a picturesque side road. Burbling down the steep grade, there was a small bridge going over a creek. It looked like a nice spot for some more photos, so I pulled up in the middle of it, grabbed my D90 and 50mm lens, and wandered around to get some different angles.

This is the view from the side of the bridge, which was quite idyllic with the gently flowing stream surrounded by trees and lush greenery.

The blue Ford F-Series pickup in the background looked pretty cool, so I got back in the car and drove up to the top of the slope to get a better picture of it, followed by a couple of the front of my car.

[Stang]

From Inglewood I had a decent drive for quite a while, going up to Lobethal, before heading back to Adelaide on Gorge Road. It's one of my favourite bits of tarmac, with some really nice bends and epic scenery along the wall. After achieving a fuel economy level that would be bad for a V8, I stopped at one of the lookouts.

[Stang]

Continuing down Gorge Road towards Adelaide, I stopped in the same spot where I took photos on the very first Gorge Road run back in mid 2010.

Just for a comparison, here are photos taken with my little Canon Powershot digital compact camera last year, and then this run with the aesthetic changes in between.

So as you can see, there's definitely a substantial and much improved difference in the Ceffy's appearance between the two hills runs.

[Stang]

After looking around for a newer model chrome grille for the Cefiro for a while, I finally managed to track one down from a fellow Skylines Australia forum member.

A few days later some packages came in the mail; the new grille and a couple of cool 1:24 scale model cars I'd ordered around the same time.

Following the hills run in the last post, there was some much more sedate driving around the suburbs for a bit.

It wasn't quite as clean as before, my girlfriend Sally wrote my name in the dirt so I would remember which car was mine.

But I did use the backseat to transport a radio control battleship, which is a pretty cool toy for $50.

I had the old Cefiro tail light garnish and the new grille sitting in the boot as well.

We then headed over to a friend's house, to show him what the new (and slightly dirty) paint and panel work looked like.

The dusk light was quite nice for taking a few snaps of our cars. His Pintara, which I've mentioned in previous posts, is faster than my car, with the CA18DET engine making 160rwkw, compared to my 139.

Coming up in Post #23; another drive up to Hahndorf.

[Stang]

One pleasant Sunday afternoon my girlfriend Sally and I went for a bit of a hills run up to Hahndorf in my Cefiro, to go to the Beerenberg Strawberry Farm.

You can see more details about it on their website here: http://www.beerenberg.com.au/

Going for a bit of a southern route, we first went up through Windy Point, and stopped for a few photos. There aren't many ways of taking a photo next to your car which don't make you look like a bit of a tool, but here's one Sally took of me with the Ceffy anyway.

There's quite a nice view from the carpark.

[Stang]

We then stopped at Belair to fill up on the way to Hahndorf, with the recent hills runs this was becoming a fairly common occurrence.

[Stang]

Trundling down the main street of Hahndorf, a beautiful white 1950s Jaguar caught my eye, parked on the side of the road all by itself. I considered stopping for photos but as it was getting close to 5pm, getting to the Beerenberg Farm store before it closed was more of a priority.

After getting to the shop and picking up some jams, we jumped back in the car and headed back through the main street towards the freeway. While I was planning to get back to the Jaguar for a few photos, a startlingly orange Audi TTS stopped me in my tracks, so I pulled up to get a couple of shots.

All photos taken with a Nikon D90 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens.

[Stang]

While I was taking photos of the rear end of my car, this very tidy green Jaguar Mark 2 rolled into my viewfinder. You can see it in the background of the photo above, just on top of the right hand side of my roof line.

The driver looked to be an older chap in his 70s. After making a u-turn, he went back the way he came, and I got back into the car.

[Stang]

As soon as I plonked myself down into the driver's seat, a sizeable white vehicle loomed into view, an American model Ford F250 pickup. I quickly raised the camera back up to my eye and fired off a few shots. It looks kind of funny, as it completely dwarfs the Hyundai station wagon and Ford Fiesta hatch alongside.

By this point it had been quite a while since we'd passed the old white Jag on the way into town, so I was hoping it was still there as I started the car and headed back toward the freeway. After passing through the busy section of little shops and restaurants, I was relieved to see the Jag still parked in the same spot on the side of the road. After Sally handed me the D90 again, I looked in the side mirror to check for traffic before opening the door, and saw a nice old Mercedes trundling along with headlights ablaze, which was worth a quick snap. I'm not a Mercedes expert, but I think it's a W108.